No BS School Management forum

All the talk with Steven Oliver got me thinking, maybe it might be good to have a forum or sub-forum on all aspects of running a no BS MA school. Ie curriculum development(like can a rotating curriculum be non-bullshido), marketing, etc.
What do you think? It might be a good way to counter all the NAPMA, MATA, MAIA mcdojo stuff

All the talk with Steven Oliver got me thinking, maybe it might be good to have a forum or sub-forum on all aspects of running a no BS MA school. Ie curriculum development(like can a rotating curriculum be non-bullshido), marketing, etc.
What do you think? It might be a good way to counter all the NAPMA, MATA, MAIA mcdojo stuff

All the talk with Steven Oliver got me thinking, maybe it might be good to have a forum or sub-forum on all aspects of running a no BS MA school. Ie curriculum development(like can a rotating curriculum be non-bullshido), marketing, etc.
What do you think? It might be a good way to counter all the NAPMA, MATA, MAIA mcdojo stuff

I dont think marketing, should be considered Mc Dojoism, to even put a flyer out on your school is marketing. An add in the paper, or Blogs, BB, or even forums, is marketing. No one should be faulted for trying to expand their school. Now there is a problem with people, that start schools with the soul purpose of making money, nothing more. However, if you intend to make your passion a full time affair, you must pay your bills, instructors, rent, or mortgage, lights, phones, Insurance, your computers, (to track and keep records etc etc). So you must have a student base that will not only cover those bills, but your day to day living expense's, you have to eat you know.

It can be hard to not fall into the (I must keep all students no matter what to survive syndrome). I teach @ a Rec Center only 2 days a week, kids class is 4.00 per session, and adults 6.00 per session. Now, I cannot make any type of living running a dojo out of the Rec Center, thats obvious. I do plan to have a 6 day a week Dojo in the near future, and it will be tough. I am not going to have long term contracts, but I do plan to have maybe 1 year at the most contracts. Contracts do make it a little easier to keep a budget, and track your expenses/gross receipts etc. I would use a debit/audit Co, they charge between 2-5% to collect electronically, and deposit it in your account. So its kind of a no muss no fuss way of collecting. When I open the full time dojo the fee will probably be 50.00 a month for kids, 75.00 for adults.

Curriculum. you would think that is easy, but you are limited by the amount of the Instructors you have per students. I have 4, Including myself, and we cover a total of 40 students for now. We start all classes with Stretching, as I stated before we do not put much emphasis on Kata, some Hojo undos if we want to do them, then usually move into partner drills (light, to moderate contact). Punching , kicking drills, then usually move on to the focus Mitts, Thai Pads, for knee and elbow drills, and of course basic physical exercise. After that, it is Sparring, anyone that wears gear, spars full contact, if your not wearing gear light to moderate.

So far, I have not drawn up a business plan, but, if you plan to present your Idea to a financial institution, you better have a good business plan, or they will shoot you down on the spot. In todays market to succeed, it is getting tougher, and tougher to make a full time living out of it, without becoming to some degree, a Mc Dojo.

I agree that it would be good to have a model of good dojo management, or how one can make money without selling out.

Scrapper and I were talking about how one could ethically charge someone $300 a month, and we agreed that private lessons would be a logical way to charge more.

So the question is lets suppose you are teaching MA, how much should you charge your students as a MA instructor for a one hour private lesson?

Outside of new york city, I could see anything from $25 to $70 an hour.

I have seen Instrucotrs teach one on one here in Fl for $75 per hour. I would do it for $40 per hour, but this instructor has a bit more experience than I do.This also leads to, do you have enough instructors so you can teach private lessons, or do you do it on your free time ? It would be better if you could do it during class hours. There are always several variables to consider. That is where a good solid business plan has to come into effect.

i think this would be a really great idea. It would give people a chance to see what it would be like to operate a successful dojo. Since i am starting a BJJ club at my college it would also be very helpfull to see differnt ways of running classes then what are being used at the school i train at.

If you all are going to have that kind of forum it should be tightly moderated. It maybe should move towards the actual instructors here who actually own schools to come up with some kind of minimum standards.

If we are going to say people are full of **** and charge too much, we ought to have a standard of what is full of ****, and what is "too much". So when somebody (like moneybags Oliver) gets called out and whines.... We point at some already agreed upon standard and say

"We decided this is what the standard is, We wrote it down and have it on the web. You dont meet it and you suck" followed quickly by "Thank you for whining on Bullshido, search function n00b, eat a bowl of dick, have a nice day".

On the subject of private lessons, maybe take a look at what other non MA places charge for privates or personal training?

What do local dance schools, gyms, voice/instrument lessons charge per hour?
These rates are probably all very similar in range and could serve as a basis or standeard in the community. It would help from over or under charging.

Another benefit of basing it off the range from non MA schools is that these places are likely getting people to pay those prices. Why pay $75 for a MA lesson when I can learn to play guitar for $35 a lesson. A big part of marketing is probably not getting the martial artists to train at your school. Instead you want people to see MA as a hobby they might want to pick up and consider when they are looking for a skill to learn. People learn how to do all sorts of things not because they set out to do so but because they have a general idea of what they want. Making MA an attractive/competitive choice and lumped together when mommy asks little johny if he wants to sign up for baseball, soccer, or football.